The tunnel, that ingenious underground structure providing safety from predators and a refuge from bad weather, was probably inspired by the subterranean habitats of certain animals. One of its most familiar members resides happily in the wooded hill adjacent to our home, that notorious nibbler of the garden known as the woodchuck, or Marmot monax. A year ago last August, the frosty-furred fellow announced his presence by decapitating double begonia blossoms from the flower pot on our front steps. Politely, the pest left a distinctive calling card – frayed shards of green sticking out of the soil of the planter.

Initially I blamed the begonias’ relentless destruction upon his rodent cousin, the chipmunk, or Tamias striatus, and peevishly peppered our once brightly-colored begonias with a canister of organic pellets made from fox urine. But the woodchuck is as wily as he is avaricious, a furry fellow who either understood the trick or had little fear of foxes. Just a few waddles away, after all, lies his burrow. The entryway, a hillside hole marked by an enormous pile of soil, provides rapid retreat into a tunnel which naturalists claim can wind as much as 45 feet beneath the ground.

As careful a housekeeper as he is a home builder, the woodchuck can move as much as 700 pounds of earth out of his burrow to create emergency exits and “side doors.” Should he permanently abandon his burrow, skunks, foxes, weasels, opossums and rabbits opportunistically move in. Apparently, our woodchuck did not elect to abandon his home last fall but was forced into foreclosure when we replaced the railroad ties lining the hill near our home.

He announced his relocation one bright spring morning, by sashaying into full view, and then shimmied over to the fenced-in vegetable garden. Determined to thwart the creature’s cravings for juicy greens, I sprinkled an organic repellent designed to produce a nasal twang in animal tasters upon the young plants. Six weeks later, while staking the tomato plants, I found an ominously shredded marigold-- used to repel insects – lying on the ground. It couldn’t be the woodchuck, I told myself. There was no way the chubby creature could climb through the wife mesh lining the vegetable garden. Just to be sure, nevertheless, I reapplied the nose-twang repellent.

Two weeks later the first bell pepper approaching maturity disappeared, followed a few days later by the sudden absence of early tomatoes. Upon close examination, I found two holes – one just outside the garden gate – the other within it suggesting that our woodchuck had burrowed underneath to reach his grocery store.

While my husband and I feed the birds regularly and rarely begrudge other wild creatures a bite or two from our basil or lettuce, the woodchuck’s gluttony rankles. In desperation I have consulted others about my woodchuck problem. “Oh. That’s a difficult one,” sighed a professor writing a book about gardens. Several old time Cape Codders have simply shrugged. Still others have regaled me with horrifying, albeit now illegal, solutions to their pesky intruders.

“I got rid of my woodchuck by pointing the gun down the burrow and pulling the trigger,” boasts one acquaintance who appeared genial enough. “Never had trouble again.”

Another explains that the gun heused had a silencer.

A third admits that his initial solution failed. Rather than resorting to a gun, he lit a cherry bomb and gingerly placed it into the woodchuck’s front door. For a week after the resulting underground explosion, that old-timer considered his woodchuck problem solved. One morning, however, he was stunned to find the creature nibbling through his garden.

For a moment he thought he had gone mad. Was the woodchuck an illusion, brought on by guilt? The ghost of the woodchuck? Or perhaps, the heir to his burrow?Instinctively, the Cape Codder rattled one of the front windows of his house. Ordinarily, when the woodchuck heard that noise, he scurried into his burrow but this time, the creature simply ignored the man.

My solution is to wait until late October, for the woodchuck hibernates from then until early February, when reporters court him as a celebrity as he awakens on Groundhog Day to look for his shadow.

While gardeners often scheme to rid their gardens of woodchucks, there is a certain wisdom to the pests’ underground habitats. At this writing, Cape Codders are suffering from tunnel envy, provoked by recent repairs to the Sagamore and Bourne bridges, the heavy traffic of tourist season and the crowded roads when a hurricane like fickle Earl is announced over the airwaves. Because bridges are the only means of getting on or off the Cape, traffic backups of an hour or more are often routine, unnerving and exasperating thousands of motorists. A tunnel or two might ease most of the congestion. If only we could inspire the woodchucks of the Cape to burrow en masse at the edges of the Cape Cod Canal.